Thousands without power in New Brunswick; extreme cold warning still in effect

Many New Brunswick towns are dealing with snowfall cleanup on Tuesday.

Thousands of people are without power in New Brunswick, where an extreme cold warning remains in place.

At one point, more than 5,000 NB Power customers had no electricity in the Edmundston area Tuesday afternoon. As of 4:15 p.m., just under 2,000 customers had no power.

A warming centre is open to the public at the Sports Pavilion in Edmundston, N.B. The city is asking residents and businesses to reduce their electricity consumption to avoid another outage.

NB Power says the outage is due to an “issue affecting the transmission system.” It hopes to have the lights back on early Tuesday evening.

Extreme cold warning

Environment Canada has issued an extreme cold warning in the following areas:

- Campbellton and the eastern half of Restigouche County

- Edmundston and Madawaska County

- Grand Falls and Victoria County

- Mount Carleton-Renous Highway

- Western half of Restigouche County

Environment Canada says a prolonged period of “very cold wind chills is expected” with temperatures feeling like -35 to -40C with the wind chill.

The agency issues extreme cold warnings when very cold temperatures or wind chill pose significant health risks, such as frost bite and hypothermia.

The cold snap is expected to last Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

Parking ban in Saint John

While northwestern New Brunswick grapples with extreme cold, Saint John residents are digging out after a snowstorm.

The city is still working to clear roads and sidewalks, many of which are still covered with snow.

“The machines that we use to service our sidewalks are much slower moving, especially with this volume of snow,” explained Michael Hugenholtz, the commissioner of the city’s Public Works and Transportation Department.

“We need to switch usually to snow blowers to remove the snow, rather than plows, and that does slow our equipment down a little bit more.”

An overnight parking ban remains in effect for parts of the city.

No on-street parking is allowed anywhere in the north, east, and west areas of the city while crews work to remove snow from the roadways.

The parking ban will take effect at midnight and end at 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Any vehicles remaining on the street during the hours of the ban will be ticketed and/or towed at the owner’s expense.

The city says 101 vehicles were ticketed and 33 were towed overnight.

For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.